Mark Twain House

Samuel Clemens -- known to most by his pen name Mark Twain -- lived in Hartford for 17 years, from 1874 to 1891.  He wrote his best known books here -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

His house was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter and built in the America High Gothic style. Clemens biographer Justin Kaplan called it "part steamboat, part medieval fortress and part cuckoo clock."

Clemens bought land for the house in a neighborhood called Nook Farm, a small writers' colony in which the best known author in today's world was his next door neighbor Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Louis Comfort Tiffany decorated several of the 25 rooms in the days before he shifted to concentrate exclusively on his glass works.

The Foundation that operates the Mark Twain House conducts several tours a day, seven days a week.  My family took a tour led by a woman who assumed the role of Clemens' wife Olivia.  Photographs are not permitted inside the house.